We delayed the publication of AV Update by a couple of days for an
exciting announcement. In celebration of
National Autonomous Vehicle (AV)
Day on May 31, 2018, the Kanata North Business Association (KNBA)
announced the development and launch of Canada’s first
Autonomous Vehicle Technology
and Innovator Directory in collaboration with Invest Ottawa
and CAVCOE. The first of its kind, this unique and valuable
resource will provide a comprehensive overview of the growing number of
contributors to Canada’s AV ecosystem. This will include innovators,
companies, governments and their agencies, post-secondary institutions,
and other organizations with AV technologies, solutions, and know-how.

“Today’s announcement of the Canadian Autonomous Vehicle Technology and
Innovator Directory marks another ‘Canadian first’ to steward national
awareness of our country's position as a global leader in autonomous
vehicles and related technologies. The Kanata North Business Association
is proud to spearhead this effort in collaboration with Invest Ottawa
and CAVCOE in order to establish coast to coast collaboration and access
to partnerships that will strengthen Canada's contribution to Autonomous
Vehicle innovation globally,” said Jamie Petten, Executive Director of
the Kanata North Business Association.

For additional information and to ensure that information on your
organization is included, please click
hereScroll down to see two buttons: “Learn more” for the full news
release, and “Canada AV
Directory” to input information.

From the Editors #2

We recently circulated within CAVCOE a published article about one of
the car manufacturers' AV strategy. This company is focused on
AI-enhanced Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) instead of full
driverless technology. We have a couple of issues with this.

First, we (and others) believe that ADAS systems that assist a human
driver rather than replace her or him have a fundamental weakness. ADAS
systems have reached the point that they give people the feeling that
the ADAS system is doing the driving. The reality is that the human in
the driver's seat is Plan B -- and humans are very bad at doing nothing
and paying attention. Switching from a computer driver to a human one is
generally too slow to avoid a collision. Many developers are moving to
full driverless technology for this very reason.

Second, the same article perpetuates the fantasy of future vehicles that
never have a collision. CAVCOE’s prediction and hope – contained in a
joint report with the Conference Board of Canada -- is that full
deployment of AVs and CVs can lead to an 80% reduction in collisions,
but not 100%. There will always be some collisions, irrespective of
whether a computer or human is doing the driving. Unfortunately,
predicting that technology can eliminate all collisions and traffic
deaths raises the public’s expectation too high and increases the
adverse publicity when there is a collision and/or traffic death
involving an AV.

Ottawa AV Innovation 201

Ottawa AV Innovation 201 was held on May 22, 2018. The event was
organized by Invest Ottawa and the Kanata North Business Association.
The idea for the event came from the Ottawa Valley Chapter of the
Ontario Public Works Association (OPWA) which proposed this event as
part of the 2018 National Public Works Week. CAVCOE’s Barrie Kirk was
pleased to be a co-MC, moderator of one panel session and a speaker on
another.

The event gave attendees an excellent overview of the Ottawa AV
ecosystem, including established companies, start-ups, and the
post-secondary institutions. In addition, the event included
perspectives into some of the big picture impacts of AVs and CVs, such
as mobility in the age of AVs and the various initiatives by all three
levels of government.

Barrie’s summing up at the end of the conference included:

AVs will change mobility in the communities we live in;

There are many existing and future economic and business
opportunities;

There is a very strong, vibrant AV/CV ecosystem in Ottawa and
Ontario as a whole, and

The biggest challenge is to improve Canada’s preparedness for AV/CVs
– Canada is #7 on the KPMG ranking of 20 countries. This is
something that all levels of government need to address.

Next Generation Fighting Vehicle

A recent briefing by National Defence to technology companies described
the early-stage planning for the Next Generation Fighting Vehicle. The
following are a few highlights from the briefing:

The vehicle will carry 4-6 people both on-road and off-road.

The objective is not a fully-autonomous shooting machine. The focus
is on using technology to handle driving, navigation and
communications, reducing the operational load and freeing up the
crew to focus on the primary mission.

The focus is on innovation and reliability.

The roles include a fighting vehicle, carrying cargo, ambulance,
etc.

The detailed requirements are a work-in-progress.

Deployment is in 5-7 years.

If you would like additional information from the briefing, please
contact Barrie Kirk at
bkirk@cavcoe.com

AV News Briefs

A recent report by the Swiss bank UBS puts a valuation of US $75 billion
on Alphabet/Google Waymo Autonomous Car Business Unit.Other major financial institutions such as Bank of America,
Morgan Stanley and Jefferies have estimates in the range of US $41
billion to US $125 billion. More information at this
link.

The chart below shows the total amount of venture capital (in $M)
flowing into the AV industry from 2006 to 2018:

Source: PitchBook

On May 4, 2018, John Chen (CEO of BlackBerry) wrote an
opinion piece
for CNBC on safety, security and privacy of AVs and his support for U.S.
Congress’s
AV START Act.
Some people had suggested driver monitoring systems in the wake of the
recent Arizona fatality involving an Uber AV. Chen argues that driver
monitoring systems defeat the fundamental purpose of an AV -- which is
enhanced safety. BlackBerry’s QNX Business Unit is a global supplier of
software platforms to the auto industry, with deployments in more than
60 million vehicles worldwide. QNX operates the Autonomous Vehicle
Innovation Centre (AVIC)
in Ottawa.

Vancouver based
ELIX Wireless
has partnered with
GoMentum Station
in Concord, California for testing its wireless charging systems and
technology.ELIX was
founded in 2013 and is a spin-off from research conducted at UBC. Its
technology has multiple applications including AVs.

The
New York Times
of May 23, 2018 carried an article on Apple’s latest iteration of its
plans to enter the AV market. According to this report, after failing to
partner with BMW and Daimler, Apple has now partnered with VW to develop
an AV-based on VW’s T6 Transporter vehicle. According to another
report,
Apple now has 55 test vehicles registered with California DMV.

The chart below shows all the companies who have registered test AVs
with California DMV:

Source: Techcrunch

CAVCOE's Ahmad Radmanesh visited to
AutonomouStuff
(AS) in San Jose, California on May 22nd. AS sells AV
components as well as fully converted fly-by-wire vehicles called
Research Platforms..The
University of Waterloo and QNX each own one of these vehicles for their
ongoing R&D.AS has sold
over 300 such vehicles over the past 18 months. 40 of these to Baidu in
China.

The Economist magazine of May 5, 2018 carried an article on
Sidewalk Labswhich is partnering with Waterfront Toronto to develop a
parcel of land called Quayside in Toronto.
This project is part of Alphabet/Google’s initiative into the Smart City
concept. No private cars will be allowed in this project – only
automated vehicles and robo taxis will be used for transporting people
and goods in the 12 acre project area.The article can be viewed on The Economist site at this
link
or
here.

CAVCOE's Paul Godsmark led a workshop as part of
VDI’s
2nd international conference in Dusseldorf April 10-11 on
Autonomous Trucks. The workshop was titled
Autonomous Service Truck Opportunities
and interactively explored what future services trucks might perform,
utilizing both software and hardware to provide services that can
replace existing providers, evolve into new services, or create
completely new services. To finish, they discussed the possibility of an
autonomous vehicle app store and the types of app that might populate
it.At CAVCOE, we believe
that the AV app store will be revolutionary for cities, businesses and
the public, much the same as the app store revolutionized how we use our
smartphones. Please contact us directly if you wish to discuss the AV
app store concept further.

The
BCTech Summit
2018
in Vancouver on May 14-16 was attended by approximately 6,000 people and
included a panel titled
Autonomous Vehicles: Are We Ready? which was moderated by Paul
Godsmark. Prior to the conference, Paul was interviewed by
Georgia Straight,
and they highlighted the key concern of privacy with AVs. We have
repeatedly made it clear that there is a dynamic tension between privacy
issues and AVs that will see everything that is visible from the street.

Data Privacy

Data privacy is very much in the news recently, driven in part by the
EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which went into effect on
May 25, 2018. The following information describes our approach.

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